Patterns - Installation

Curator: Bengt Olof Johansson

Kalmar konstmuseum is delighted to be able to show a completely new art installation by the artist Kåre Holgerson. This artwork consists of two separate parts that in different ways describes how the artists’ mother Karin perceived and related to reality throughout her life. The first part is made up of a number of close studies of ladies dresses carried out at Nordiska Museet in Stockholm and similar institutions, a herbarium and also several objects from her career as a crafts and textiles teacher. Everything has been made with the utmost care and attention to detail. The second part consists of photographs taken by the artist in two of the houses where Karin lived towards the end of her life. The extraordinary disarray that can be seen in the photographs is a stark contrast to the other objects in the exhibition. Lars Nylander, professor of literature at the University of Trondheim and for many years a friend of the artist has written a sensitive text for the exhibition, a text he has given the name Signatures of Life.  This is how he has ended his text:

But in the last instance “pattern” becomes a question that we all have to ask ourselves with regards to our own life: is it also patterns of this kind, patterns that precedes all types of symbolic meanings that is at the heart of what I call my character, my personality, my “I”? Is it a pattern of this kind that makes up the most authentic signatures of life?

With this installation Kåre Holgerson poses questions regarding identity and of how a life that gradually transforms and changes in a dramatic way should be understood and given justice. With unsentimental consequence he is opening the door to an existential set of problems and is touching upon time and life, chaos and order. The many stages of the concept; pattern, is here unfolding and gives the installation a number of possible approaches and interpretations.

Holgersons installation is also indirectly giving rise to questions of a more moral character. What rights have the artist to use biographical material, i.e. the life of other people, in an attempt to say something that affects us all? This has been a vivid subject of discussion in the field of literature and not least because of the “docusoap genre” that has been prevalent on television for the last decade. Without making any comparisons with such cultural phenomena this question is in this instance decided by the way that Kåre Holgerson has approached and framed the subject. This is to say, in what way you as the spectator have been given the opportunity to perceive and understand his work. Evidently it is not the actual individual; Karin, that is of interest in Patterns. Amongst a number of available options the artist had decided upon this particular solution. If the work in the end is adding up to a plausible or even a fantastic statement is up to you, the spectator.

Kåre Holgerson works as an artist and teacher and has since completing his art training in the early part of the 1980´s been based in the Kalmar region. He has been the driving force behind the work to establish Kulturmagasinet in Bergkvara as a vital node on the regional art scene. In his own artistic practice he has mainly been working with printmaking, performances and installations that in a number of ways have formed a unified body of work over a long period of time. Works with titles such as Vid gräns (At border) or Exil (Exile) has been transformed and been given new meanings in varying contexts. With the installation Patterns Kåre Holgerson has embarked upon a new subject matter in his artistic practice that we have only seen the beginning of.

Bengt Olof Johansson, Director of Kalmar konstmuseum

Would you like more information, please contact the Director of Kalmar konstmuseum,
Bengt Olof Johansson, telephone +46 480-42 62 70,
e-mail: bengt-olof@kalmarkonstmuseum.se